A good working thesis is your best friend.

Those writers who understand the concept of "working thesis" are way ahead of the game. A "working thesis" is a thesis that works for you, helping you to see where your ideas are going. Many students keep their thesis sentence in front of them at all times to help them to control the direction of their argument. But what happens when you stumble onto an idea that your thesis isn't prepared for? Or, more important, what happens when you think everything is going well in your paper and suddenly you arrive at a block? Always return to your working thesis, and give it a critical once-over. You may find that the block in your writing process is related to some limitation in your thesis. Or you may find that hidden somewhere in that working thesis is the germ of an even better idea. Stay in conversation with your thesis throughout the writing process. You'll be surprised at what you can learn from it.

Constructing the Thesis: A Writer's Clinic for Beginners

Constructing a good thesis sentence is no easy matter. In creating a thesis, the writer struggles with her own confusion. She seeks to create some order out of the morass of observations she has about a text. If you are willing to endure a little confusion, we'll show you here how it is that a thesis sentence is constructed. As the thesis will pass through several incarnations before it reaches its final form, we advise you to read this section completely from beginning to end.

Ready?

When structuring your thesis sentence, it's helpful to start by considering how it was that you came to your argument in the first place. You arrived at your point of view by way of certain observations and a particular logic. You will expect your reader to arrive at the same conclusion, via the same observations and logic that you yourself used.

Let's imagine that you have been assigned a novel for your English 5 class. You've noticed when reading the book that the author seems to linger on the relatively insignificant action of women putting on their lipstick. You've also noticed that lipstick stains abound in the novel, leaving their mark on glasses, sheets, and so on. Finally, you've noticed that the women characters use lipstick in different ways: Character A puts lipstick on alone in the bathroom, in front of a mirror; Character B puts lipstick on in front of others, but only when they seem on the verge of rejecting her; Character C delights in seeing her incriminating lipstick smears on the shirts and sheets of her lover; Character D wears lipstick only when she goes to have lunch with her ex-lover, as a way of exaggerating the grimace of her pain.

From these observations, you see a pattern at work. Characters A and B use lipstick to mask themselves and their feelings; Characters C and D use lipstick to unmask themselves (or others). Moreover, you notice that the author seems to admire Characters C and D for their insistence that emotions be revealed. You think that you have a good idea for a thesis sentence, and so you give it a go: "In X's novel, the characters' seemingly insignificant use of lipstick in fact points to one of the novel's larger themes: the masking and unmasking of the self."

This sentence does mirror for the reader your own process of discovery: it begins with an observation that a seemingly insignificant event has meaning(s) in the novel, and then it classifies those meanings into two categories. In other words, some of your logic is indeed present in the thesis as you've written it.

You'll notice that I've said "some of your logic." It's important to take a second look at this thesis to see what it is that's been left out.

Put yourself in the place of the reader. What does this thesis sentence tell you about the structure of the argument to come? Well, as a potential reader I would expect that first, the writer will provide evidence that lipstick is indeed an important symbol in this novel. Second, I would expect the writer to argue that lipstick signifies a character's desire to mask herself (a common observation). Finally, I would expect the writer to show me how, exactly, lipstick is used to reveal the self.

Now ask yourself what this thesis doesn't tell the reader about the argument to come. We understand as readers that this paper is going to be about the masking and unmasking of the self. We understand (because it is common knowledge) that lipstick can be used to create a mask. But how, precisely, does lipstick unmask the self? Here you seem to be pointing to some uncommon use of lipstick, but you haven't even hinted at what that "uncommon use" is, or why it's important. Look closely at your thesis and ask yourself this hard question: Does my thesis give my reader a sense of the real argument to come?

In this case, it doesn't. However, this doesn't mean that the thesis sentence is useless. In fact, even though this thesis doesn't provide the reader with a very good "map" of the essay, it does help you, the writer, to see the overall structure of your argument. In other words, it's a good working thesis sentence for your paper.

What is a Working Thesis Sentence?

Let's take a minute to define this term.

A thesis sentence, as we've said, is a kind of contract between you and your reader. It asserts, controls, and structures your argument for your reader's ease. A working thesis sentence, on the other hand, is a sentence that you compose in order to make the work of writing easier. It's a sentence that asserts, controls, and structures the argument for you.

The working thesis need not be eloquent. In fact, it can be quite clunky, declaring your argument and then clumsily listing your supporting points. Not to worry: you'll be revising your thesis, and often more than once.

Remember that, as you write, you are bound to come up with new ideas and observations that you'd like to incorporate into your paper. Every time you make a new discovery, your thesis sentence will have to be revised. Sometimes you'll find that you're stuck in your writing. You may need to return to your thesis. Perhaps you haven't clearly defined an important term or condition in your thesis? Maybe that's why you find yourself unable to progress beyond a certain point in your argument?

Revising your working thesis at this juncture could help you to clarify for yourself the direction of your argument. Don't be afraid to revise! In fact, the most important quality of a working thesis sentence is its flexibility. A working thesis needs to keep up with your thinking. It needs to accommodate what you learn as you go along.

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